Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. -- Groucho Marx I remember what I've said in the past about actors...but Groucho was a lot more than just a movie star. He was a comedic genius who wrote most of his own material, and he was even funnier and more brilliant when he ad-libbed without a script. Besides, he said something nice about both books and dogs, and in the same sentence. It's a very funny line. And if you've read my book Always a Next One, you know how much I love dogs. … [Read more...]
The Pearl: 18 March 2015
March 18, 2015 by Leave a Comment
To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible. – Thomas Aquinas This pearl of wisdom from St. Thomas Aquinas is a reminder for me that arguing online with atheists is such a terrible waste of my time. My Counterargument for God has already covered every reason I could think to offer why design is superior to descent to explain why we have the variety of flora and fauna on Earth that we can easily observe. I've discovered that most atheists won't finish my book. They can't even get past the section on Darwinism and my explanation why design is a superior argument. Design is superior to descent for one simple reason.,,,life cannot evolve until it exists. Life cannot "descend" from inanimate matter. In other words, before evolution ever becomes possible, either supernatural creation, or stupendous good luck, has already occurred. Of course, when St. Thomas uses the word "faith", of course he means religious faith, or belief in a supernatural creator God. But atheists also have faith, if only faith in their intelligence, and that of their peers. As a general rule, atheists apparently refuse to even consider the possibility that someone with religious beliefs could have experienced something they haven't, or might know something they don't. However, observation is a crucial component of the scientific method, and I have observed phenomena in multiple personal experience that literally defies the laws of physics. Firsthand observation is empirical evidence, according to the scientific method. The … [Read more...]
The Pearl: 17 March 2015
March 17, 2015 by Leave a Comment
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. -- Douglas Adams Douglas Adams may have been the funniest writer who has ever lived. If you haven't read his famous series that begins with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, you really should. The "trilogy" of four books aren't merely funny -- they are absolutely laugh out loud hilarious. If you've never seen the humor possibilities of science fiction, you can't have read anything by Douglas Adams before. Frankly, I don't know if Guardians of the Galaxy would have even been conceivable, if Adams had not shown many years ago that humor and science fiction actually work very well together. And a galaxy without Groot simply wouldn't be the same... I can certainly empathize with Adams on the subject of deadlines. Theoretically, we should be editing my novel that follows Premonition right now, but I've managed to postpone completing the first draft for at least another month. It's not that I refuse to work -- I just have a bad habit of procrastinating when it comes to producing work that might produce income. Obviously, I waste too much time writing about things that interest me, rather than things that might potentially pay for me to write about them. Like this article, for example...unless you happen to navigate over to my "Books" page and find something you'd like to read or click on the book cover above, this effort will never amount to anything more than a labor of love: today, my love for Douglas Adams. I adamantly refuse to have my web designer add a "Donate" button to create … [Read more...]
Transcendental design
March 5, 2015 by Leave a Comment
The advocates of Darwinism have declared that the debate about origins is over -- firmly settled in favor of descent over design. Quite frankly, I wish the debate were over. I've gotten tired of circular arguments with Darwinists about their exaggerated claims that misinterpret some scientific evidence while completely ignoring equally important evidence that threatens their ultimately atheistic worldview. These tedious arguments get old pretty quick. It's a terrible waste of time. Frequently, my opponents become angry and impolite. And I also have constructive work to do, meaning novels to write. But I remain unconvinced that descent actually explains why and how humans came to exist, and I simply can't abide an inferior argument winning by default. At a casual glance, I would expect the creature shown above to be most likely found in the jungle, a zoo, or National Geographic video...not living as my neighbor in the house next door. In fact, I'm fairly certain that "people" have never looked like the creature depicted above. Yet according to advocates of Darwinian theory, that the female ape-like creature shown in the picture had sexual intercourse with a male ape-like creature that looked pretty much exactly like her. Over generations the baby apes shape-shifted to lose their fur and get smarter in the process of becoming human, all attributable to the vagaries of a powerful, mystical factor known as Deep Time. Isolation of the gene pool and genetic drift allegedly caused this clearly ape-like creature to eventually "evolve" into a sentient human, … [Read more...]
Climate change, evolution, and irrational scientism
February 25, 2015 by 1 Comment
Climate is what we expect. Weather is what we get. -- Mark Twain I believe in climate change -- at minimum, the climate in Georgia where I live changes four times per year. I call the phenomena "seasons." However, I don't consider "climate change" as something humans understand anywhere near well enough to control. Neither do I believe the sky is imminently about to fall because of human consumption of fossil fuels. Oil and natural gas seem to exist for a reason. Why shouldn't we efficiently put our natural resources to good use? As someone with a couple of decades worth of experience and formerly considered as something of an expert in the field of software development, I can say with complete confidence that only sheer hubris allows climate science experts to insist with any degree of certainty that their computer models can predict the future. The problem is simply too complex. There are far too many unknowns. For example, the forecast in Atlanta today is calling for between 3 and 7 inches of snow...quite a margin of error, wouldn't you agree? Now if the weather experts can't even accurately forecast how much snow is going to fall later today, how can they possibly say with total confidence they know what the weather will be like several years into the future? The butterfly effect is part of the chaos theory of mathematics. The term was coined by Edward Lorenz to describe his discovery that very slight changes to the input data for his weather models could produce a significant variations in the outcome, as if the flapping of a butterfly's wings in a … [Read more...]
